A Small Fiasco

It seriously doesn’t get more glamorous than this.

You don’t have to be a mom to get so busy that you forget to take a shower. Sometimes I go so long without taking one that I can’t remember what day it was the last time I bathed . . . so you can imagine my excitement a few days ago when Lucy fell asleep while Paul and Charlie were out playing at the park. I quietly laid her down in the bouncy chair and tip-toed into the bathroom for a rare, totally-quiet-except-for-the-patter-of-water, relaxing shower with my way-too-expensive shampoo and conditioner that I got because I had a gift card.

You see, I don’t even like our shower. The water pressure is terrible, and it’s got a badly-sealed window with a poofy plastic curtain right in the middle of it.

That didn’t matter, though. After the water was on and I got my orange-ginger shampoo all lathered up in my hair, I actually said a little prayer of thanks for the hot water, the sunlight filtering into the bathroom, and my family.

You guys know what an air horn sounds like, right?

The day before said shower, a maintenance guy noticed one of our smoke detector batteries had been disconnected and slid the battery back into place. I was grateful, because I hadn’t realized that it wasn’t working.

I had forgotten in my gratefulness the small fact that shower steam would always trigger the alarm. Hence the previously disconnected battery.

Anyway, this particular detector is the old kind. The kind that, rather than a high-pitched beep, emits a blaring tiny horn-type sound that vaguely sounds like someone screaming“NUTS TO YOUR SHOWER, LADY! AHAHAHAHA!”

Soon, this sound was mingled with the blood-curdling screams of a 4 and ½ month old baby.

Decision Time.

Do I quickly finish up the shower amidst the din of screaming and air horn taunting? Or do shut the shower off and DRIP EVERYWHERE while I try to salvage my tiny moment of Me Time?

Option B, please.

Option B, however, does not come without downsides. Option B means that I get to drip shampooey water everywhere while my naked post-second-baby-body flaps a towel at the smoke detector, frantically trying to disperse the steam. Option B would also require me to stand next to a bouncy chair, desperately pushing on one of the bouncy legs while the freezing-Nebraska-May-air dries the soapy water on my not-shaved-since-April legs.

Miraculously, Lucy fell back to sleep. And, after a weird (I’m assuming there was still some juice left from the battery?), short blast of the tiny bastard horn and a few more minutes of bare-assed bouncing, I actually got to finish my shower. And it was great.